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THE  \m 

Of  Hi 


RHODE  ISLAND'S   INFLUENCE 

IN  THE 

FORMATION   OF   AMERICAN 
DEMOCRACY 


COMMENCEMENT  ADDRESS  BY 

WALTER  R  ANGELL 

AT 
RHODE  ISLAND  STATE  COLLEGE 

KINGSTON 


JUNE  19,  1922 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2013 


http://archive.org/details/rhodeislanclsinflOOange 


COMMENCEMENT  ADDRESS 

by 

WALTER    F.     ANGELL 

RHODE   ISLAND  STATE  COLLEGE 

JUNE  19,  1922 


As  a  prologue  to  the  remarks  which  I  am  about  to  address 
to  you,  I  want  to  relate  an  incident  in  the  hfe  of  Benjamin 
DisraeU  which  I  recently  read  in  the  Memoirs  of  Chauncey 
M.  Depew. 

A  young  clergyman  had  been  called  upon  to  preach  before 
the  Queen.  He  went  to  Disraeli  for  advice.  "If  you 
preach  thirty  minutes."  said  DisraeH,  "her  Majesty  will  be 
bored.  If  you  preach  fifteen  minutes,  her  Majesty  will  be 
pleased.  If  you  preach  ten  minutes,  her  Majesty  will  be 
delighted."  "But,"  said  the  clergyman,  "what  can  a  man 
possibly  say  in  only  ten  minutes?"  "That,"  said  Disraeli, 
"will  be  a  matter  of  indifference  to  her  Majesty." 

Disraeli  evidently  thought  that  what  a  man  says  is  often 
of  less  interest  to  his  audience  than  the  expedition  with 
which  he  says  it.  That  is  the  way  it  always  seemed  to  me, 
when  I  was  a  youngster  and  had  to  listen  to  speeches  from 
my  elders.  And  with  that  recollection  in  my  mind,  and 
sympathy  for  youth  in  my  heart,  I  am  going  to  present  to 
you  just  two  ideas.  First,  the  debt  that  American  De- 
mocracy owes  to  two  men,  one  of  whom  was  the  founder  of 
this  State;  and  second,  the  reaction  of  Europe  to  the  appeal 
of  American  Democracy,  which  we  have  witnessed  in  our 
own  time. 


If  anyone  should  inquire  what  were  the  distinctive  char- 
acteristics of  the  governmental  system  which  has  been 
developed  in  the  last  three  hundred  years  in  these  United 
StateSjthe  answer  would  certainly  be  democracy  and  religious 
toleration.  And  it  should  further  be  said  that  the  principle 
of  religious  toleration  universally  prevalent  throughout  this 
whole  region  has  brought  with  it  a  political  toleration 
unknown  in  any  other  part  of  the  world.  These  two  prin- 
ciples of  democracy  and  toleration  were  first  fully  developed 
and  appHed  as  principles  for  the  government  of  a  civil  State 
in  that  small  stretch  of  territory  in  a  part  of  which  we  now 
stand,  between  the  western  shores  of  Narragansett  Bay  and 
the  Connecticut  River. 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  I  have  chosen  to  devote  the  few 
words  which  I  have  to  say  to  the  young  people  who  are 
about  to  leave  this  Rhode  Island  institution,  to  emphasize 
the  part  which  this  State  and  its  founder  took  in  shaping 
these  principles  of  our  American  Commonwealth.  I  want 
them  to  go  forth  with  the  inspiration  that,  while  they  have 
been  pursuing  their  studies  here,  they  have  trod  the  soil  and 
breathed  the  air  of  the  spot  where  the  great  principles  of 
American  democracy  first  took  root  and  from  which  they 
have  spread  from  ocean  to  ocean. 

To  me  there  has  always  been  a  certain  picturesque  and 
historic  interest  in  an  incident  recorded  in  one  of  the  writings 
of  Roger  Williams.  He  tells  of  a  journey  which  he  made  with 
two  companions  to  and  from  Sempringham,  a  Uttle  village 


in  Lincolnshire  in  old  England.  The  journey  took  place 
sometime  in  the  reign  of  King  James  the  First  and  a  few 
years  after  the  Pilgrim  had  first  set  foot  on  Plymouth  Rock. 
Sempringham  was  the  seat  of  the  Earl  of  Lincoln,  where 
was  discussed  and  developed  the  movement  of  that  great 
body  of  EngHshmen  of  whom  Williams  and  his  companions 
were  a  part,  who  were  planning  to  migrate  to  the  shores  of 
North  America  to  escape  the  religious  and  political  perse- 
cution which  rendered  Ufe  in  their  native  land  intolerable. 
Williams  tells  us  something  of  the  discussion  between  him 
and  his  companions  as  they  rode  along.  Those  companions 
were  Thomas  Hooker,  the  founder  of  Connecticut,  and  John 
Cotton,  soon  to  become  the  leading  spirit  in  the  colony  of 
Massachusetts;  so  that  we  have  here  together,  on  the  road 
down  from  Sempringham,  the  three  men  whose  ideas  were 
soon  to  shape  the  destinies  of  New  England  and,  as  we  shall 
see  later,  the  whole  fabric  of  our  American  government. 

John  Cotton  came  to  the  then  recently  established  colony 
of  Massachusetts  and  speedily  converted  its  government 
into  a  theocracy,  of  which  he  was  the  high  priest.  No  man 
could  be  a  freeman  unless  he  was  a  member  of  the  church — 
an  arrangement  which  very  soon  disfranchised  a  great 
majority  of  the  people.  The  magistrates  were  governed  by 
the  laws  laid  down  in  holy  writ — as  interpreted  by  Cotton 
and  his  fellow  clergymen.  No  dissent  from  their  inter- 
pretation was  permitted.  If  a  man  seeking  the  truth  by  the 
light  of  his  own  conscience  spoke  such  dissent,  they  put  a 


cleft  stick  upon  his  tongue.  If  he  hstened  to  such  dissent, 
they  shaved  off  his  ears.  And  if  he  ventured  to  disagree 
with  them  upon  the  question  of  whether  justification  came 
by  faith  or  works,  they  tied  him  to  a  post  and  laid  a  lash 
upon  his  naked  back. 

This  was  no  soil  in  which  democracy  could  grow. 

"Democracy,"  said  John  Cotton,  " I  do  not  conceive  that 
ever  God  did  ordeyne  as  a  fit  government  eyther  for  church 
or  commonwealth.  If  the  people  be  governors,  who  shall 
be  governed?"  And  Winthrop,  his  associate,  said, 
' 'Democracy  amongst  civil  nations  is  accounted  the 
meanest  and  worst  of  all  forms  of  government."  It  was 
all  sufficient  for  Winthrop  that  there  was  never  such  a 
government  in  Israel.  As  to  any  toleration  of  other 
people's  opinion,  the  attitude  of  the  Massachusetts  theocracy 
was  what  might  have  been  expected,  and  it  could  not  be 
better  expressed  than  in  the  words  of  Thomas  Dudley, 
another  of  Cotton's  associates,  who  wrote  the  grim  refrain: 

"Let  men  of  God  in  courts  and  churches  watch 
O'er  such  as  do  a  toleration  hatch, 
Lest  that  ill  egg  bring  forth  a  cockatrice, 
To  poison  all  with  heresy  and  vice." 

Roger  Williams  and  Thomas  Hooker  followed  their 
companion  of  the  Sempringham  road  to  Massachusetts,  but 
from  the  rigid  and  cruel  theocracy  which  they  found  that 
Cotton  was  estabhshing  there  WiUiams  was  banished  and 
Hooker  fled.  In  striking  contrast  to  the  sentiments  of 
Cotton  and  his  followers  above  quoted.  Hooker  declared  to 


his  followers  in  their  new  settlement  at  Hartford  that  "the 
choice  of  public  magistrates  belongs  unto  the  people  by 
God's  own  allowance"  and  that  "the  foundation  of  au- 
thority is  laid,  firstly,  in  the  free  consent  of  the  people." 
There  you  have  the  principle  of  democracy  boldly  and 
clearly  declared.  And  under  the  guidance  of  Williams,  his 
followers  in  Providence  agreed  to  subject  themselves  "in 
active  or  passive  obedience  to  all  such  orders  or  agreements 
as  shall  be  made  for  the  public  good  of  the  body  in  an  orderly 
way  by  the  major  consent  of  the  present  inhabitants,  masters 
of  families,  incorporated  together  into  a  township,  and  such 
others  whom  they  shall  admit  into  the  same,  only  in  civil 
thing s.^^  There  you  have  both  democracy  and  toleration 
put  into  actual  operation  as  the  basis  of  a  civil  State. 

If  any  argument  for  the  desirability  or  necessity  of 
toleration  as  a  political  principle  were  necessary,  it  might 
well  be  drawn  from  the  lives  of  these  three  men  themselves. 
They  were  all  Englishmen.  They  were  all  clergymen. 
They  were  all  educated  in  the  same  university — Cambridge 
in  old  England.  They  were  all  men  of  the  highest  character 
and  the  purest  motives,  each  giving  his  best  to  the  cause  of 
mankind  as  he  viewed  it;  and  in  the  New  World  to  which 
they  came  they  were  all  surrounded  by  the  same  conditions 
and  confronted  with  the  same  problems.  Yet  their  con- 
clusions as  to  how  those  problems  should  be  solved  were  as 
wide  apart  as  the  poles.  This  is  the  story  of  all  mankind. 
Human  minds  are  no  more  identical  in  feature  than  human 


faces.  Different  minds  draw  different  conclusions  from  the 
same  facts.  If  there  is  to  be  peace  and  order  and  progress 
among  men,  they  must  Usten  to  the  opinions  of  others  and 
be  free  to  express  their  own.  That  is  toleration.  And  if 
the  pyramid  of  society  is  to  be  stable,  it  must  rest  upon  its 
base,  and  not  upon  its  apex;  men  must  ultimately  be 
governed  in  their  conduct  towards  each  other  in  civil 
matters  by  the  will  of  the  majority; — that  is  democracy. 

The  freedom  of  thought  and  expression  which  Roger 
Wilhams  made  the  basic  principle  of  his  State  brought  both 
its  trials  and  its  compensations.  It  made  his  colony  the 
refuge  of  men  of  contentious  spirit,  who  were  unwelcome  in 
communities  where  stricter  views  prevailed  and  who  had 
yet  to  learn  the  lesson  that  liberty  and  unbridled  license  are 
not  the  same  thing.  It  is  said  that  even  in  Connecticut  an 
eminent  divine  used  to  begin  his  prayer  with  the  words, 
"Oh,  Lord,  thou  knowest  that  by  nature  we  are  all  Rhode 
Islanders.''  And  Williams  himself  once  described  his  colony 
as  a  mere  patch  of  ground  stretching  from  the  Pawcatuck 
River  northward  and  full  of  troublesome  inhabitants — a 
description  which  some  of  us  may  sometimes  feel  is  applic- 
able even  to  this  day.  But  if  his  patience  was  tried,  his 
faith  was  never  shaken,  and  the  whole  world  knows  today 
that  it  was  justified.  Moreoever,  the  compensations  soon 
made  themselves  evident.  The  principle  of  toleration  saved 
this  colony  from  any  participation  in  the  two  greatest 
tragedies  which  stain  the  pages  of  New  England's  history. 


Although   the   reUgious   principles   of   the   Quakers   were 
obnoxious  to  the  founders  of  our  State,  they  were  never 
persecuted  here.  No  lash  was  ever  laid  on  a  Quaker's  back 
in  Rhode  Island  as  he  was  dragged  at  a  cart's  tail  from  town 
to  town.     Nor  was  any  witch  ever  hanged  or  branded  or 
even  prosecuted  here.    Freedom  to  think  and  to  utter  their 
thoughts  as  they  chose  kept  people  both  humane  and  sane. 
Such  a  demonology  as  lay  at  the  basis  of  witchcraft  flourishes 
only  like  a  fungus  in  a  mind  from  which  light  is  excluded  as 
from  a  dark  cellar.     It  has  Httle  chance  to  develop  in  minds 
which  have  liberty  to  search  for  truth  wherever  they  can 
find  it,  and  to  freely  exchange  opinions  with  their  fellowmen. 
When  Massachusetts  demanded  of  our  Legislature  that  we 
cease  harboring  Quakers  and  take  measures  to  repress  them, 
the   Legislature   replied:     "We   have   no   law   among   us 
whereby  to  punish  any  for  only  declaring  by  words,  &c., 
theire  mindes  and  understandings  concerning  the  things 
and  ways  of  God,  as  to  salvation  and  an  eternal  condition." 
And  they  went  on  to  say  that  they  had  found  by  experience 
that  where  the  Quakers  were  let  alone  they  gave  little 
trouble.     Here  again  our  forefathers  had  discovered  the 
important  truth  that  contentious  spirits  thrive  and  gain 
strength  by  counter-contention  and  persecution,  and  are 
best  subdued  by  toleration  and  non-resistance.  This   is  a 
principle  of  very  broad  application.     If  generally  recognized 
and  applied  in  domestic  affairs,  I  think  it  would  materially 
lessen  the  evil  of  divorce. 


It  is  only  in  recent  times  that  the  debt  which  our  whole 
country  owes  to  Roger  Wilhams  and  Thomas  Hooker  has 
been  appreciated.  Among  the  humble  followers  of  Williams 
there  were  no  literary  men.  Their  hard  struggle  with  the 
wilderness  gave  them  little  time,  even  if  they  had  the 
ability,  to  write  history,  although  unwittingly  they  were 
making  it.  But  Massachusetts  has  always  been  prolific  in 
self  appreciative  literature.  It  would  seem  that  nearly  all 
of  her  leading  colonists  kept  diaries,  and  that  about  one  in 
ten  of  them  was  a  historian.  They  and  their  descendants 
wrote  the  history  of  New  England  for  nearly  two  hundred 
years,  and  thereby  created  the  impression  that  Massachu- 
setts was  New  England.  It  remained  for  later  historians 
to  re-examine  the  facts  and  correct  the  error,  and  the  result 
is  well  summed  up  in  the  following  paragraph  from  the 
latest  writer  on  The  Founding  of  New  England : 

"The  westward  movement  of  New  England  was  to 
continue  until  her  sons  and  her  institutions  were  to  be 
found  in  a  continuous  chain  of  communities  from 
Portland  on  the  Atlantic  to  Portland  on  the  Pacific,  and 
the  influence  of  New  England  thought  upon  the  life  of 
the  nation  cannot  be  over-estimated.  In  so  far  as  the 
origins  of  that  thought  can  be  traced  back  to  any 
definite  leaders,  or  individual  colonies,  it  was  evidently 
the  ideas  of  Williams  and  Hooker,  rather  than  those  of 
Winthrop,  with  all  his  high  qualities,  which  were  to 
dominate  the  American  people,  and  to  be  absorbed  into 
their  very  being." 


8 


For  this  succinct  statement  of  the  influence  which  the 
founder  of  our  State  exerted  in  shaping  the  governmental 
system  of  this  nation,  this  Rhode  Island  institution  ought 
someday  to  give  Mr.  James  Truslow  Adams  a  degree. 

And  I  may  add  that,  if  you  seek  a  confirmation  of  the 
statement  made  a  few  moments  ago  that  it  was  from  this 
strip  of  territory  between  Narragansett  Bay  and  the  Con- 
necticut River  that  the  principles  of  our  American  de- 
mocracy took  their  origin  and  spread  throughout  our  whole 
American  Commonwealth,  you  have  only  to  read  those 
great  public  documents  which  together  form  the  Magna 
Charta  of  the  liberties  of  our  whole  people — the  Declaration 
of  Independence,  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  and 
the  Constitutions  of  the  48  States  of  the  Union.  In  every 
one  of  them  you  will  find  enshrined  the  principle  of  de- 
mocracy as  established  by  Hooker,  and  the  principles  of 
democracy  and  toleration  as  established  and  practiced  by 
Williams  and  his  followers.  And  in  none  of  them  does  a 
vestige  of  the  narrow  and  cruel  theocracy  which  John 
Cotton  established  in  Massachusetts  survive. 

While  American  democracy,  since  it  vindicated  itself  in 
the  Civil  War,  has  been  much  lauded  by  liberal  minds  in 
Europe,  its  first  direct  impact  upon  the  political  system  of 
that  continent  has  been  witnessed  in  our  own  day-at  the 
peace  conference  at  Versailles.  There  a  President  of  the 
United  States  met  the  political  leaders  of  Europe  and 


endeavored  to  induce  them  to  recast  a  world  in  chaos,  and 
which  we  had  helped  them  to  save  from  despotism,  upon 
the  lines  which  we  had  shown  could  bring  peace  and  pros- 
perity to  a  whole  continent.  We  went  into  the  conference 
with  a  declaration  of  American  principles,  such  as  freedom 
of  the  seas,  self  determination  of  nations,  disarmament, 
etc.,  and  our  slogan  was,  "Make  the  world  safe  for  de- 
mocracy." Not  one  of  these  principles  came  out  of  that 
conference  alive.  They  were  either  utterly  rejected  or 
whittled  away  to  nothing.  The  very  idea  of  the  freedom 
of  the  seas  was  so  abhorrent  to  our  EngHsh  cousins  that  we 
had  to  abandon  it  before  we  sat  down  at  the  table,  in  order 
to  keep  peace  in  the  family.  For  our  own  sake  and  the 
world's,  I  hope  that  that  peace  may  always  be  maintained. 
But  I  do  think  that  it  is  time  that  we  emphasized  a  little 
that  gentle  hint  that  James  Russell  Lowell  gave  more  than 
half  a  century  ago  in  his  poem  entitled  "Jonathan  to  John": 

"We  own  the  ocean,  tu  John: 
You  mus'n'  take  it  hard  , 
Ef  we  can't  think  with  you,  John, 
It's  jest  your  own  back-yard. 
Ole  Uncle  S,  sez  he,  '  I  guess 
Ef  theVs  his  claim,'  sez  he, 
'The  fencin'-stuff'll  cost  enough 
To  bust  up  friend  J.  B. 
Ez  wal  ez  you  an'  me!'  " 

Our  programme  for  Versailles  failed  because  the 
European  mind,  or  at  least  that  part  of  it  which  is  repre- 
sented in  its  chancelleries,  does  not  understand  what 
American  democracy  is,  or,  when  it  does  understand  it, 
wants  none  of  it.  American  democracy  impHes  toleration 
— letting  other  people  alone,  and  not  seeking  to  appropriate 


lO 


their  territories  or  exploit  their  resources  against  their  will. 
This  idea  of  toleration  makes  no  appeal  to  the  European 
mind.  That  mind  has  been  too  long  moulded  in  the  doc- 
trine of  war  and  conquest  to  yield  readily  to  the  doctrine 
of  peace  and  toleration.  It  is  still  under  the  influence  of 
the  teachings  of  MachiavelH.  It  still  believes  that  some 
one  nation  must  rule  the  world  and  dictate  the  policy  of 
other  nations.  The  conference  at  Versailles  and  those 
which  have  succeeded  it  show  that  Europe  cares  nothing 
for  the  principles  of  democracy  as  we  understand  it,  but 
does  care  very  much  about  coal  and  oil  and  iron  and  the 
territories  of  weaker  peoples  in  Africa  and  Mesopotamia 
and  Russia  where  those  precious  articles  may  be  obtained. 
What  we  have  been  witnessing,  ever  since  the  Armistice,  is 
a  struggle  of  the  conquering  European  States  over  the 
division  of  the  spoils  of  the  victory  which  we  helped  them 
to  win.  The  old  diplomacy  is  in  the  saddle.  It  could  not 
be  unhorsed  by  the  spear  of  our  young  democracy,  however 
valiantly  wielded.  It  listened  cynically,  with  secret  treaties 
in  its  pocket,  to  our  plea  for  open  covenants  openly  arrived 
at.  While  it  talked  peace,  it  financed  wars;  and  while  it 
professed  admiration  for  our  doctrine  of  self  determination, 
it  established  a  new  machinery  for  extending  its  control  over 
weak  peoples  in  remote  parts  of  the  earth  by  creating  a 
system  of  mandates — generously  oftering  to  the  United 
States  the  mandate  for  that  region  where  the  most  trouble 
was  sure  to  arise  and  where  no  reward  could  by  any  possi- 

II 


bility  be  expected.  With  such  a  diplomatic  debauch,  the 
United  States  wisely  decided  that  it  would  have  nothing 
to  do.  That  it  will  bring  retribution  (as  it  has  often  done 
before)  and,  if  persisted  in,  ruin  upon  those  who  devised  it, 
is  a  foregone  conclusion.  The  spoilers  are  already  at  odds 
among  themselves. 

We  Americans  firmly  believe  that  the  democracy  de- 
veloped upon  the  lines  laid  down  by  Wilhams  and  Hooker 
is  the  best  form  of  government  in  the  world,  and  we  hope  to 
see  it  become  universal,  for  the  good  of  mankind.  How 
shall  we  accomplish  this?  It  cannot  be  done  by  force.  It 
cannot  be  done  by  preaching  to  the  nations  around  a  council 
table,  and,  as  the  President  of  one  of  our  great  universities 
is  said  to  recommend,  bringing  our  fist  down  upon  the  table 
to  emphasize  our  doctrine.  It  cannot  be  done  by  loaning 
them  money  with  which  to  finance  new  wars.  It  can  only 
be  done  by  the  influence  of  example — by  keeping  our  own 
house  in  order;  by  a  progressive  development  of  our 
political  system  upon  the  principles  laid  down  by  its  far- 
seeing  and  illustrious  founders;  by  constantly  exerting  the 
great  power  which  our  one  hundred  millions  of  energetic 
people  and  the  boundless  resources  of  our  country  give  us  in 
the  interests  of  peace,  against  the  oppressors  of  the  weak 
and  the  aggressions  of  the  strong;  by  continuing  to  hold 
forth  what  our  own  charter  happily  describes  as  a  lively 
experiment,  that  it  is  by  adherence  to  those  principles  that 
a  civil  state  may  flourish  and  be  best  maintained. 


12 


0112  105929464 


